"Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."
--- Editorial in the Boston Post, 1865
Little goals and little dreams have no place in business… if you want to succeed. Has it ever happened to you that as soon as you get all fired up about a new goal or a new direction to take your business, someone tries to throw water on your fire? It is like magic! People that I haven't heard from in weeks will pick up on an idea that I have through casual conversation and then go out of their way to let me know why it won't work.
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."
--- Lee DeForest, quoted in the New York Times, 1926
Dreams and goals are what set successful entrepreneurs apart from want-to-be successful people. Daniel Burnham once said, "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die."
That is heavy stuff, and not for the faint of heart. It is the type of motivation and inspiration that helped to create all of our revolutions: American, industrial, technological, and so on.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U. S. Office of Patents, 1899
Although you can't shun all of your friends, try to keep a mental distance from the folks who knock holes in your plans. Good, wise counsel is necessary to seek, but if they are not wisely advising and just slamming, shut them out mentally. Don't give them a foothold into your plans. As Mark Tinley, an Ironman champ from the '80s once said, "Stay away from television and people with bad attitudes."
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
--- Ken Olsen, President of Digital Equipment Corporation, at the Convention of the World Future Society, 1977
Whatever your business goals are, whatever your dream for success is, or whatever your big ideas are, hold them close to your chest and only share them with your team members who will support you and friends who will applaud you. Who knows what new breakthrough inventions could have been if only the inventor didn't allow others to rain on his or her parade.
"The ordinary 'horseless carriage' is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle."
--- The Literary Digest, October 14, 1899
Finish this last quarter of 2009 reviewing your goals and plans. Make sure that you didn't change any because you were afraid of what the negative people would say. Go through with them anyway. If the goals don't bring a payday, let that be your decision to fail. Don't leave yourself with regrets and what-ifs.
"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
--- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in Gone with the Wind.
